Julien Valroff's weblog and personal homepage
Posts tagged Book reviews
The Definitive Guide to symfony by by F. Potencier & F. Zaninotto
Nov 10th
“The Definitive Guide to symfony” is part of the official documentation of the symfony PHP Web framework.
This book can be read online, and is published under the GFDL license. Hhowever, reading a printed copy allows a better in-depth understanding of this framework. It is very well written, with a lot of examples. It is directed to either newbies wanting to begin developing web applications with symfony, or experts, as it can be used as a quick reference for specific aspects of the web framework.
Though the book was updated online for newer releases of symfony, no new revision was printed at the moment of writing. Symfony 1.0 remains the preferred stable branch for long term projects, with its 3 years support (until January 2010).
For those who like having a book in their hands and want to use a simple but powerful web framework, here is the Amazon link for buying a printed copy.
“SELinux by Example” by F. Mayer, D. Caplan & K. MacMillan
May 6th
I have bought this book just before Debian Etch was released, as it is the first Debian release with full SELinux support. SELinux documentation obviously exists on the Web, but none I was able to find is comprehensive and easy to read for a beginner like me.
This book is described as « a complete hands-on guide to using SELinux ». Although it is very complete, it aims more at policy writers than SELinux administrators. I am currently reading it for the second time, as some parts are still quite obscure for me.
However, it allowed me to set up SELinux on two systems without any major issue. I have even started writing small policies for nullmailer and Apache mod_dav.
This book is publishd by Prentice Hall Professional.
“LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell” by Jeffrey Dean
Jan 19th
I bought this book some time ago to try and improve my skills in the aim of applying for LPI Level 1 tests. This is a short yet very exhaustive guide for this certification, but is also very useful for everyone wishing to improve his knowledge of GNU/Linux basics.
All the topics are covered in this book (bash, file systems, networking, package management etc.).
Many people report having passed the LPIC tests thanks to this book and its sample exams.
The book is published by O’Reilly & Associates.
“User Mode Linux” by Jeff Dike
Jan 19th
This book, published by Prentice Hall, in the Bruce Perens’ Open Source Series, and written by Jeff Dike, the main developer of User Mode Linux, is a complete review of all the features of this virtualisation tool. I have learned a lot, the chapters are in the right order, allowing you to create quickly your first “virtual machine”, and letting you understand what are the requirements of UML in terms of administration, security and maintenance.
Although many documentations are already available on the Web, I have appreciated reading through this book, and recommend any people interested in alternatives to Xen buying this book.
Other (more detailed) reviews are available eg. here, and you can even read an excerpt on this page.
“The Debian System” by Martin F. Krafft
Apr 15th
I have just finished reading carefully the book written by Martin F. Krafft simply called “The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques” (Open Source Press / No Starch Press – Sept. 2005). I must say it is the first book about Debian I have ever read that I really enjoyed reading: really easy to read and understand, quite complete, never boring, numerous concrete examples, and I have found some chapters are quite unique in this kind of book (eg. I have particularly appreciated the part that deals with symlinks farm for Linux kernel building).
Everyone can read this book, beginners on Debian (maybe not beginners on GNU/Linux) as well as experienced users, and it proves to be useful to both!
Other reviews are available here and here (just examples, more can be found!).
